Disclaimer: Saban owns the Power Rangers and most anything
affiliated with them. I
guess you could say that I own Nigel, Kyle, Scruffy and a couple of
other stray characters in this
series. I'd like to think of them as living extensions of my warped
imagination, however. ^-^ The
song is "Crash and Burn" by Savage Garden. I hope you enjoy the fic!
^-^

"So you're my father." Her words had no emotion to them, even
though
there was a myriad of
feelings swirling and flipping dizzily through her heart. There wasn't
just one she could assign, so she'd
opted for none of them to show. She brought her arms around her stomach
in an instinctive motion of
self protection.

This was her special place. This is where she came when things
overwhelmed her so much that
she couldn't stand to look at the real world anymore. This is where she
went when the pain got to be
too much.

But he had followed her here. She didn't want him here. This place
was hers. This was
her sanctuary. No one had ever come here but her, no one knew it
existed but her. What
right did he have to be here?

"Yes, I am your father. Cassie, I can explain." He said uncertainly
as he walked towards her.
She took a wary step back, and he stopped his advance on her. "Cassie,
please."

She averted her eyes from his. He wanted to explain. She stared at
the grass beneath her bare
feet. Did she want him to explain? Would an explanation make any
difference? An explanation
couldn't change the past. It couldn't change who she was, who she had
become. It couldn't erase the
hurt of decades of anguish.

"Why did you follow me here? I don't want you here." She said
stonily as she looked out across the tall grass of her prairie. She
couldn't look at him. Not even as she was telling him to leave. To
face him meant that she had to face herself, and she wasn't ready for
that yet.

"If you really didn't want me here, I wouldn't be here." He
said as he came a step closer, this time with more confidence. Cassie
saw the movement out of the corner of her eye, but she didn't
back up this time. Instead, she sank down onto the cool Earth beneath
her feet. The tall grass only
came to her shoulders, so she drew her knees close to her body and
rested her forehead on them.

"I hate you." She said, the teary pain shaking in her unsteady
voice. She stiffened as he sank to
the ground beside her. She didn't want him this close. Having people
this close was dangerous. She'd had that pounded lesson into her heart
enough times to fracture it into pieces. She'd picked those
pieces up, but she had made sure that the pieces would never be
available to anyone again. She had
hid them deep within herself. In this place, her safe place.

"You can't hate me, Cassie. You don't even know me." He said
reasonably, as he sat quietly
beside her. A small breeze whipped through the grasses, and she
shivered
at the rustling sound it
made.

"I have more reason to hate you then not to hate you. Do you know
how many times I tried to
see you in my mind's eye and failed?" She asked belligerently.

"Probably about the same number of times I tried to picture you and
couldn't." He said as the
sun shone down on their heads. She didn't like the sun, so bright and
cheery overhead in the sky.
Usually it brightened her spirits and gave her a reason to keep going,
but it annoyed her now. She
smiled through her tears as clouds rolled in across the sky, leaving
them in a shadowed world.

"Cassie, please talk to me." He reached out towards her, and she
felt his hand gently touch her
shoulder. She shook it off quickly, afraid of letting him get too close
to the hidden pieces.

"I used to come here when I was younger, you know, and try to
picture who you were. What
you were like." She said as she turned her head away from him.

"Do you know where this place is?" He asked, and she abruptly
turned
her head back to him.
Her eyes met his for the first time, and they flared in anger.

"This is my place. And you are not wanted here." She said,
as
a wind picked up,
blowing her thick black hair out of her face. He turned his eyes from
hers, unconcerned.

"This is KO-35." He said and she opened her mouth to object. He
held
up a hand, silencing her
as he smiled bittersweetly over the tall prairie grasses. "Your mother
loved these fields. She used to
say that they made her feel invincible and small at the same time. I
took her here for a picnic when we were still just kids dating. She
spent half an hour just twirling in the grass, her feet bare, and her
dress rippling in the breeze. She insisted I build our house over
there." He said as he waved his hand.

She glared at him as the house appeared on the edge of the prairie
grassland. He avoided her
gaze, so she turned hers towards the house. It looked familiar. She
stared sadly at it, and then sighed. It looked familiar, because she
remembered it.

"I don't want to see this." She said softly as she shut her eyes
tight and held her head in her
hands. She felt his touch on her shoulders again. This time, she didn't
have the strength to shrug it off.

"What are you so afraid of, Cassie? Just hear me out. You
are
my daughter. I would
never hurt you. You can trust me on that." He said as he rubbed her
shoulders. She watched,
distantly, as a tear dropped off the tip of her nose, to land in the
ground she was staring at so intently.

"I don't trust anyone. Not completely." She said. "And even if I
did, why should I trust you?
You of all people? People are born trusting. I was born trusting. But
you were the first to betray me.
I have more reason not to trust you than anyone." She said dejectedly
as
she absently watched
another tear slip off the tip of her nose.

"A life without trust is a hard, lonely life." Larent said softly,
as he gently kneaded her tense
shoulders. "Even as Ecliptor, I couldn't live without it. I had to
trust
in Astronema, believe in her, or
my life didn't have a purpose. Everyone has to trust someone." He said
slowly as she lifted her chin
up and stared off over the grasses.

"I trust my friends. Ashley, Andros, Carlos, TJ, Zhane, Carone. I
trusted them with my life, but I could never tell them everything." She
said as she flipped her gaze back to Larent. Her eyes slowly
met Larent's. "Maybe I couldn't tell them everything because I
didn't understand everything.
But I think I'm beginning to."

"Tell me." He said in a sort of half plea, she turned her gaze from
him again. "I want to
understand. I want to know what went so wrong with the beautiful happy
little girl I once had."

She turned to look at him, and something in her heart twinged a
little at the longing look in his
eyes. He did want to understand. And as she thought about it, she
wanted
him to understand too.
She wanted him to feel what she had felt, she wanted him to know where
she was coming from.

She sighed heavily as she let the grasses of her imagination slip
into the tiny cramped bathroom
of her memories. She was probably just a bit younger then Kyle was in
this particular memory, and
she was standing in front of the mirror while her mother stood behind
her. Cassie listened as her
mother asked her younger self to get the hairbrush for her.

Her mother grabbed the floating hairbrush out of midair, and
slammed
it down on the bathroom
sink in anger. Cassie shivered slightly at the look in the woman's eyes
as she turned on the dark
haired girl beside her. Larent stepped closer, putting an arm around
her
shoulder as he too watched
the scene unfold before them.

Her mother's eyes were shadowed, the circles under them
accentuating
the large, scared brown
eyes. They were always scared. Sometimes it was simply a terrified
scared, one that made her
mother make mewling sound of fear. And sometimes it was an angry sort
of
scared. One that brought her mother's wrath down on her.

"You can't do stuff like this, Cassie." Her mother said bitterly as
she picked up the brush and
began wrenching the bristles through her long black hair. Her eyes
teared as the bristles caught on
snarls, but she didn't voice the hurt aloud.

"I'm sorry, Mama. I didn't mean to." She said softly as she looked
away from her reflection in
the mirror. She knew what she looked like. A skinny brat with black
hair. A short little nobody with
brown eyes. A freak of nature.

"That doesn't cut it." Her mother said, and she cringed at the edgy
terror she heard just over her
mother's anger. "You can't do this. It's wrong. None of your
friends can do this, can they?"

"No Mama." She answered because it was expected of her.

"I'm sorry, Cassie, but I'm going to have to punish you for this. I
told you never to use those
powers, ever. And you deliberately disobeyed me. I'm sorry, but you
can't go to Suzette's birthday
party. And once I finish brushing your hair, you are going straight to
your room to think about what
you've done."

"I'm sorry, Mama. Please let me go to Suzette's party. Please. I
won't ever do it again. I
promise." Cassie pleaded tearfully. Suzette was the only friend she had
managed to make in her
kindergarten class. She'd been looking forward to this party all week
long. She had her party dress
on, the present was wrapped, and her mom was braiding her hair
especially for the occasion.

"No." Her mother said shortly as she quickly wrapped her daughter's
hair in a ponytail. She
whipped her head around to get a better look at her mother's
expression.
It seemed sad, apologetic
even, but there was also a determined edge to it. She knew that
protesting wouldn't get her
anywhere. "Now go on up to your room and change. You have to learn,
Cassie. You can't use
powers like this. It makes you abnormal, it brings people's attention
to
you. Now march, young
lady."

Cassie sniffed loudly as the tears pooled in her eyes. Her mother's
face remained just as
unforgiving, though. So slowly, Cassie walked out of the bathroom and
down the hall to her room. In a fit of anger she flung the door shut,
but even the sound of it slamming didn't make her feel any
better.

She flung herself down on the bed, the tears flowing fast and hard
until she hiccuped with them
like only a small child could. Her mom was right, she was a freak.
Suzette couldn't make things float
in the air. Her friend had laughed when she'd even suggested it. She
never saw any of the rest of the
kids doing anything like what she could do. In fact, none of the adults
she knew could do it either.
Her mother included.

"There's something wrong with me." She whispered to her stuffed
dragon, Tipper. The stuffed
dragon seemed to wink back at her and Cassie pulled the brilliantly
colored toy close to her chest.
Tipper understood her, she may only have been a silly stuffed dragon,
but she understood her.

Cassie sat up Indian style on her bed and placed the purple dragon
before her. Tipper was
about the size of a normal stuffed bear, but the reptile's fur was
still
thick and soft despite many years
of wear and tear. Her eyes were a bright shade of blue that swirled
slightly when Cassie moved the
stones in the light. Tipper's large wings were an iridescent shade of
white, which to her eyes, seemed
to glow with life.

"Mama won't let me go to Suzette's party. Suzette's going to think
I
don't like her." Cassie said
as she sniffed loudly. To her, the dragon seemed to nod
sympathetically.
Cassie concentrated on the
stuffed animal, and the white wings unfurled. She bit her lip in
concentration, and the dragon's body
lifted up off her bedspread.

She didn't understand what was so wrong about this. She wasn't
hurting anyone, and it seemed,
well, it was natural. A part of her was the happiest when she was doing
this, playing like this. This
was who she was, not doing this would be like not breathing.

"You understand, don't you, Tipper." She brought the dragon closer
and rubbed noses with it,
and then let it float back to where she had had it before.

"Cassie!"

The dragon instantly dropped back down onto the pink bedspread, and
Cassie cringed as her
mother stormed into the room. The woman reached down and snatched
Tipper
off the bed. She
yelped as she scrambled off the bed after her mother as the woman
stalked out of the room. The
door slammed shut.

"Mama! No!" Cassie sobbed as she yanked at the door knob. It
refused
to budge and her tears gathered strength. "Mama! Gimme back Tipper.
Please!" She yelled. The room was silent with the
exception of her sniffles. "Gimme back Tipper." She sobbed softly as
she
slid to the floor and rested
her head against the door.

Cassie watched, disconnected, as the bedroom faded away and was
replaced by her field.
Larent stood beside her, his face unreadable. She snuck a glance at him
as she pushed a strand of
hair behind her ear. He was still staring off at where the younger her
had been sobbing on the floor of her bedroom.

"She never did give me Tipper back, but it was just a stuffed
dragon. I never did use my powers again after that though. It's
amazing,
but you can live without breathing." She whispered as the
grasses
rustled softly at her knees.

"I gave you that dragon." He said as he turned to her, and she saw
tears in his eyes. That
startled her, and made her feel slightly uncomfortable. She hadn't
expected him to be moved by the
memory, she hadn't expected him to be affected at all.

"She knew." He said with a sigh. "She knew why I never returned
that
day. She knew she
would never see me again, people were disappearing without a trace all
the time. They all had had
their telekinetic powers in common. She knew what I was capable of. She
must have taken you and
fled to Earth. She didn't want you using your powers because she was
scared they'd find you and
take you too."

"She was scared a lot." Cassie shrugged as she struggled to not be
affected by what he was
telling her. She let the comforting field fade away once more.

The grasses were replaced by the old grey linoleum of a shabby
looking kitchen. Her mother
was leaning on the counter, looking worried. Her step-father was pacing
the length of the kitchen,
ignoring both mother and daughter.

"How could you get fired, Roy? We need the money. How are we going
to make ends meet?"
Her mother asked, and Roy glared at her as he paced.

"Does it look like I know?" He asked angrily. Her mother seemed to
shrink back slightly from
that, but she still had a determined look in her eyes.

"Well we have to figure out what we're going to do somehow. Cassie
needs new shoes and
school starts up next week. She's going to need new school supplies.
The
rent's due in two weeks,
and we still have to pay for the phone, electricity, and groceries."
She
said as Roy walked over to
her.

"Well what do you want me to do about it?" He yelled directly in
her
face.

"Get a new job?" Her mother suggested. Roy's face turned red as he
grabbed the woman's arm
and wrenched her away from the kitchen counter.

"Are you trying to say that I'm not man enough to get the one I had
back?" He yelled, his face
turning purple. Her mother winced as he increased the pressure on her
upper arm.

"Mama?" She asked hesitantly from her spot at the kitchen table.

"Stay out of this, Cassie honey." Her mother replied, and Cassie
shivered at the raw edge the
voice had to it.

"Roy, be reasonable, you can't get that job back. They fired you.
Can't you just look for a new
one?" She asked hesitantly. He whipped her back around and threw her
against the counter. She
winced as she heard her mother's back connect with the counter top. Roy
let go of her mother's arm, and she doubled over as she slid to the
floor.

"I'll get it back." Roy said determinedly as he reached for another
beer from the fridge.

"They aren't going to give you the job back." Her mother said
between harsh gasps of air. He
slammed the beer down on the table in front of her, and Cassie watched
with terrified eyes as he
went after her mother.

There was a flash of brilliant white and Cassie stumbled back
against Larent as the scene
abruptly changed to another kitchen. This time, it wasn't her mother
cowering before her step-father,
it was her shrinking away from Lenny.

They were arguing about the phone bill. He was telling her that she
called Angel Grove too
often, that it was too expensive. He was yelling, screaming at her as
he
advanced on her.

"It's only a couple of bucks, Lenny. It's not like its going to
cost
a hundred bucks." She tried to
point out reasonably. "This bill's only ten bucks more then the last
one
was."

"What, and I'm just made of money?" He yelled. She regretted having
brought up the subject. It
was now obvious to her that he'd had more than a little to drink. She
hadn't realized that though when she'd brought the mail in. He drank so
often that his expression drunk versus sober were getting
harder and harder to read at a first glance.

"It's just ten bucks, I'll pay for it out of my salary." She said
with a sigh.

"So what? I'm not man enough for you?" He thundered as he pushed
her
hard against the
kitchen counter.

"No, I didn't say that." She said as he raised his hand. She
instinctively put her hand up and
blocked the blow before he could hit her. He howled in frustration at
that. She tried to scramble out
of the way as his face turned a motley shade of purple and red.

He managed to kick her feet out from under her though, as his fist
finally connected with her
face. She fell backwards, and she heard more than felt her skull
connect
with the kitchen counter
before utter darkness overtook her.

Cassie stumbled back and landed on the ground with a thump as the
memory rapidly blinked
back into the lush grasses of her prairie. She hadn't meant to show him
that. She'd never meant to
show anyone that.

"Cassie, are you okay?" Larent asked as he bent down beside her.
She
couldn't look at him, not now. Too many old emotions were swirling
through her, coursing unchecked through her veins.

She could still taste the sweaty feeling of fear on the tip of her
tongue. In the beginning she had
believed in Lenny. After all it was only natural. He had been the man
she'd married. He had vowed to honor her and protect her. Maybe that's
why his sudden bursts of violence had always been that
much more terrifying. When she had been a ranger, the monsters had
looked like monsters.
There was a distinct line between them and her. She hadn't lived with
them on a daily basis in the
same house. She hadn't considered them her friend, her lover, or anyone
close to her for that matter.

Their inherent evilness had been easy to recognize. Lenny's had
not.
His was more insidious,
more crafty. He'd led her to believe in him, he'd let her think that he
was a fairly decent, honorable
guy. And then he'd dashed all those dreams by hitting her. Of course,
he
would regain his sobriety the next morning, and he would lead her on
the
same merry little chase all over again. I'm sorry,
Cassie. I don't know what came over me...It'll never happen again.
And every time, she'd
believed he'd meant it.

Maybe that's why the shame always seemed to sidle up close to her
heart when she recalled
incidents such as this. For God's sake, she had been a Power Ranger.
One
of the strongest
super-heros in the universe, but she hadn't had enough strength of mind
or of will to object to the
vicious cycle of her marriage to Lenny. Maybe deep inside her she
thought that that was the way
relationships between a man and woman should be, maybe a part of her
felt she deserved the
beatings.

"Cassie, are you going to be okay?"

She looked up only to discover that Larent had an arm wrapped
protectively around her
shoulder. She blinked with surprise as she looked into his deep brown
eyes. They were so much like
her own, she couldn't help but think.

"Hey, I'll be fine. It's all water under the bridge anyway, right?"
She said as she gave a shaky
laugh. He smiled sadly down at her.

"Yeah, I suppose. Those times for you are over, Princess. I think
that between me and your
friends we'll be able to help you work through it all." He said softly.
"But until we have that time to sit
and discuss things, I think we need to go back to the real world and
get
Kyle."

***

Cassie came back into reality just as the tires of Nigel's Explorer
grinded to a halt in front of one of Angel Grove's more shadier motels.
She undid her seat beat dazedly as everyone else climbed out
of the SUV.

"How do we know where Lenny's holding him?" Cassie asked as she
finally landed on the
asphalt of the parking lot. A part of her didn't even know how they'd
discovered that this was the
particular motel was the one. Andros had said it was like Kyle was a
mini-tracking device. She
shook her head slightly, she didn't care how they knew, she decided.
She
just wanted her son back,
unharmed. And she wanted Lenny forever out of their lives.

"Scruffy can sniff out which room they're in." Andros said absently
as he let down the back
hatch to Nigel's Explorer. The coyote leaped out, and immediately began
sniffing. Cassie watched the dog with mixed apprehension and hope.

"It's almost over." Nigel whispered to her as he drew her into a
quick hug before the coyote
leaped off towards the door to the room at the end of the outdoor
hallway. Andros was the first to
make it to the door, and he pounded his fist against it in two hard
knocks.

Nigel didn't wait for a response to Andros' knocks though. He bent
his shoulder in slightly and
rammed the rickety door in, connecting solidly with a body on the other
side. Nigel felt a certain
satisfaction as he looked down to see Lenny blearily picking himself
off
the ground. Quickly he
scanned the room, and his gaze fell on the little dark haired boy
huddled on the single double bed.

"Nigel! Mom!" Kyle cried out as he then flung himself off the bed
and towards his mother's
already open arms. Cassie had tears flowing down her cheeks, but as
Nigel caught a glance at Kyle's face, he felt anger pump through his
blood.

The boy's jaw was obviously swollen, and there was a nasty gash
three inch gash at the corner
of his lip that was covered in dried blood. Nigel shifted his gaze to
Lenny's fists as the man struggled
to his feet. The bastard had managed jab Kyle with one of the rather
nasty looking rings on his fat
fingers.

In the back of his mind, Nigel felt the vein in his neck bulge as
he
glared at the man in front of
him. How could a grown person, an adult, physically hit a child? How
could anyone inflict pain like
that on someone that young, that innocent? Vaguely he heard himself
growl as he advanced on
Lenny.

Children were supposed to be cherished, loved by their parents. His
Aunt and his Uncle had
unwittingly taught him that. His eyes narrowed as he picked Lenny off
the ground telepathically. What kind of a monster did it take to beat
on
someone so helpless, someone so incapable of defending
themselves?

What kind of monster ordered their own son's death? Absently, his
hand went to the old scar on his side that was covered by his shirt.
What kind of parents beat on their children at every
opportunity? He reached up and rubbed the bump on his nose slightly as
if to remind himself of all the times he'd had it broken for him.

His gaze narrowed on Lenny's neck and he started applying mental
pressure as the floating man
began protesting with more enthusiasm. Dimly, he acknowledged that his
main fight wasn't with the
man in front of him, it was with two other people. But he shrugged off
the niggling bit of conscious.
Lenny, his parents. As far as he was concerned, there was no
difference.

He had scared nicks that lined his ribcage from where lasers had
sliced through young flesh. He
had nightmares at night of falling into the ocean and not being able to
swim a stroke. Sometimes, he
thought he could even feel the panic rise in his chest as a hand shoved
him down, keeping him from
reaching the oxygen at the surface. He even had scar tissue on his
right
shoulder that belied an
experience with fire punishment.

He wanted to get even. He wanted to inflict as much pain and damage
as he had received. He
wanted to lash out and destroy those who had no respect for the
defenseless. He wanted to kill those who had shown him no mercy.

Lenny's face turned a blotched shade of red as his oxygen supply
was
slowly cut off. Nigel
smiled coldly as he ignored the growing protests from those behind him.
It felt cleansing almost, to let
out the bitterness and anger of years past. It was like pulling a lever
on his heart and releasing the
floodgates that held back poisonous thoughts.

In the back of his mind, he realized it was wrong. No matter how
damn good it felt. It was
wrong. He was using his powers on someone who was defenseless against
them. In a way, he was
doing the very thing that he despised.

But something inside him had snapped when he'd seen Kyle's face. He
was out of control, and
he was past caring how it ended. He wanted the little boy inside his
heart to feel vindicated for the
wrongs done to him. He wanted revenge for the pain he had been put
through, for the pain Kyle had
been put through. Most of all he wanted these feelings to come to the
surface. They had festered for
so long inside his heart, like pus beneath the skin. He wanted to be at
peace.